Thursday, March 12, 2009

I am not a Doctor

I don't know how it happens but it happens often, I start having a conversation with someone and somehow the subject about what my husband does for a living comes up and when I say he is a Doctor I get a medical question. Note I am not a Doctor and we already discussed that I am a SAHM and that before that I worked in as an office manager, nonetheless I hear a:

"my thyroid levels are high but my medication should control it, right?"or a "I keep feeling a pain in my knee after I work out, what could that be?"

Ummmmm.... hmmmmm..... ughhhhhh....how the heck should I know?

I guess they figure out by my blank stare that I have no idea what the answer to their question is and then the conversation steers away to something else, although sometimes in the worst case scenarios they proceed to ask me if I could ask my husband for them and that is simply awkward. I don't mind this kind of thing when it comes from friend's and family the thing is it usually isn't friends and family but practically complete strangers who ask me.

Maybe I should dedicate any spare time to reading the New England Journal of Medicine so that I could be better prepared for those moments, but be warned you should not take any medical advise coming from me.

4 comments:

Oh geez, I'm sure that gets annoying. I'm a registered nurse, and I can certainly relate to the barrage of symptoms from strangers. Sadly, it's been so long since I had adult patients, I usually don't have a clue how to answer either.

Thanks for checking out my blog and commenting. I see that you are married to a resident and was wondering if you would be interested in contributing to a blog for doctor wives. I just wanted a place to go and talk doc, so I thought I'd invite some other people along. I'm actually hoping someone would be willing to take it over for me as I don't have time to work on it. But if you are interested, I could add you as either a writer or just a reader. Let me know. My email is on my profile. Thanks again and it was lovely to *meet* you!

Yikes! This happens to me too, although it's usually in the context of "could you ask your husband about X?"

Most of the time my husband (the doctor) tells them to see a doctor (ha, go figure). I mean, if your bone feels broken, how can you know it's broken without an X-ray? You need instruments, people, to diagnose. So yeah, that's how we get around it. :)